Please join the Havurah Racial Justice Committee and award-winning journalist and Havurah Shalom member Rebecca Clarren to discuss her book The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota and an American Inheritance. There will be an opportunity to have your copy of the book signed afterward by Rebecca. (Books will also be for sale.)

Her book shares the entangled history of her Jewish homestead ancestors on the South Dakota prairie and their Lakota neighbors. It melds investigative reporting with personal family history to reveal the intertwined stories of her family and the Lakota, and the devastating cycle of loss of Indigenous land, culture, and resources that continues today. 

Growing up, Rebecca Clarren only knew the major plot points of her tenacious immigrant family’s origins. Her great-great-grandparents, the Sinykins, and their six children fled antisemitism in Russia and settled on a 160-acre homestead in South Dakota. Over the next few decades, the Sinykins became an American immigrant success story. What none of Clarren’s ancestors ever mentioned was that their land, the foundation for much of their wealth, had been cruelly taken from the Lakota by the United States government.

The book, a blend of history, journalism, and memoir, not only retells the ways US policy helped her immigrant family at great cost to Native Americans but grapples with the legacy of those harms today and whether repair is possible.

Both Kirkus Reviews and The Forward named The Cost of Free Land a Best Book of 2023; it's been shortlisted for both the Great Plains Book Award and Stanford's Saroyan Prize.

Clarren's presentation will include a slide show and an audience Q&A followed by book signing.

Questions: Please contact Kathy Gordon or Julia Lager Mesulam.

Elul Tov!
This event is being offered as part of Havurah Shalom’s celebration of the Hebrew month of Elul! As Elul precedes Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we use this time for study, reflection, and mental and spiritual preparation and inspiration. All are invited to attend our gatherings, which span spiritual, text-based, political, ecological and creative topics. We hope you will find them enriching, fun, moving, and worthwhile. You can find the full list of classes here, or see the calendar. For questions about this programming, please reach out to Rachel Pollak.

Accommodations
Havurah Shalom strives to offer accessible programming and spaces to all. If a reasonable accommodation can improve your experience of this activity, please email info@havurahshalom.org.